


Pages of my Heart

by annies_hoodie



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, kind of?, more of a character study than anything i guess, not really shippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2020-11-10 15:21:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20853944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annies_hoodie/pseuds/annies_hoodie
Summary: The disquiet in Annie's soul is quelled only by the touch of pen to paper, and though she writes in the silence of the night she is never alone. Mikasa is always watching.





	1. Chapter 1

Annie had died a long time ago. 

She wasn’t sure exactly when it had happened; only that she had felt a shiver, a ripple that passed through her body from the soles of her feet to her shoulders, seeping into her skin until it settled in her chest. She’d drawn in a shaky breath, and when it escaped between her lips, a featherlight sigh, she saw a baby bird leave its golden nest and fly towards the moon. 

Away from home. 

The rest of the trek to Paradis was walked with footsteps that weren’t her own.

* * *

She would shake at night. 

Violent tremors that took her stubborn breath away, and through her haze she sometimes heard the others girls sending hushed whispers throughout the dorm; a lukewarm breeze passing over tall grass.

Her bed was too warm, her pillow too damp.

With soft steps she’d slip out into the darkness, going wherever her feet took her. Tonight, it was under a tree, a barren, decaying thing that had turned coal black, it’s once-white bark peeled away by the cruel passage of time. Its skin crumbled when Annie’s back pressed against it, disintegrating into nothingness. 

When she tried to cry no tears fell. Her sobs were empty, silent wretches, and when the exhaustion won, her small shoulders aching and chest burning, she slumped to the cold ground, eyes closed, wondering if cries who were heard by no one were even real.

She dreamt of ice, of shattering into pieces if anyone touched her. 

* * *

With every passing day, Annie found it harder to keep them in. 

When they threatened to roll off the tip of her tongue, she swallowed them back, her face a mask as she felt the sear rip through her throat and settle deep in her belly.

They spread throughout her being, coursing through her blood and pulsing in her veins, begging to be carved out. She’d wipe her palms, slick with sweat, across her knees but she couldn’t get them off, couldn’t shake the tendrils that grappled her limbs and weighed her down. 

She grew faint often, the world around her a blurred canvas of moving mouths that stayed mute, of faces with eyes that could see what hers held if she didn’t look away.

She couldn’t hold in them in much longer. 

Her secrets were poisoning her.

* * *

Someone had told her to write. 

She couldn’t recall who it was but she’d listened, writing words on paper alone in the dead of night. 

_ I want to die. _

She scrawled the letters onto the thick parchment, the shiny graphite impressing into the frayed yellowed page. 

Her gaze lingered on the words for a moment. The person had told her writing would help her feel better, that the more she wrote down the better she’d feel. 

But it was all Annie had to say. 

She drew a small box of matches from her pocket. With a hiss, the small head of a flame roared to life, and Annie held it to the page, watching as the parchment curled, burning.

She watched as it traveled higher, hungrily eating her words, snuffing them out into flakes of ash. The smoke bit at her eyes, rims collecting tears from the harsh acidity.

Soon all that remained was the lingering smolder of pulp, the scent of a secret that had been harbored too long, finally set free.

She slept soundly that night. 

* * *

In the dead of night, when the stars were still far from fading, Annie saw the ghost.

A sliver of white swaddled by shadows and a swatch of deep red fabric, lingering on the outskirts of the overpass that Annie settled under. 

She wasn’t frightened. The ghost wouldn’t hurt her; she was simply there to watch, to observe, to gather details like she always did, tucking them into a corner of her mind to comb through in isolation later. Rather than speak, the ghost was an unapologetic observer; perusing people like specimens so she could build a proper profile of them. She was a collector of souls, a walking library of everyone’s deepest insecurities, hopes, fears, and dreams. She knew more than she should, and it was all to harbor power to protect the boy she towered over, haunting his form like a particularly persistent grim reaper.

Annie supposed maybe she did scare her a bit.

A spark in her peripheral vision caused a shift in her gaze, and for a whisper of a moment Annie saw eyes the color of slick sleet, reflected off the moonlight before disappearing back into the shadows. 

Annie let a breath pass through her nose, her fingers pressing into parchment as she wrote out a flurry of words, each on separate pieces. 

_ I’m scared. _

_ I’m lonely. _

_ I’m going to kill everyone. _

_ I murdered Marco. _

_ I want to go home. _

_ I don’t want to do this. _

She burned them fast and fed her words to the river, tendrils of smoke curling from their corpses as they sunk below the surface of tepid water. She hoped the river wouldn’t rot from their poison, their stench that turned her insides black. 

Was she the only one with secrets like this? Secrets that were so evil and unspeakable that they couldn’t be uttered aloud? Secrets that were so innocent in their yearning, yet so unattainable that they’d never amount to anything but ashes? 

She reckoned the ghost had secrets too. The way she seemed to float through people rather than touch them, sustaining herself with silence as she kept to herself, rebuffing even the kindest attempts at kinship...it spoke more for her than words ever could, the reflexive need to keep people at arm’s length, the desire to move forward without fanfare, a seemingly quiet existence betrayed by cold fury simmering just under the surface. 

Her movements felt familiar to Annie, drifting wordlessly, walking wearily on a path that didn’t guarantee a happy ending. Trying to cling to something or someone to stay afloat, a soul stuck in limbo with no hand to hold, no one to guide along the way. Alone and quiet and cold.

She remembered when she’d called the ghost’s name once, on a humid summer evening, their skin damp with sweat, skin itchy from bug bites and starchy clothing. She’d said it softly, between the breezes that rolled through the cuffs of their sleeves and tickled their scalps. 

“_Mikasa._”

The name passed by her still form, caught up in the wind that tousled the ends of her black hair and blew onward towards the sunset when it couldn’t find purchase. No turn of the head, no twitch of the lips. No acknowledgement whatsoever.

Perhaps she hadn’t heard Annie.

Or maybe she wasn’t there at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Annie had been wrong.

She’d found this out with every hammer-headed fist Mikasa drove between the soft flesh of her organs, with every snarl that sent cold spittle spraying across her face, with the mute, predatory gaze she looked down at Annie with, her larynx trapped beneath the pressure of Mikasa’s dirt-caked boot.

Mikasa was no ghost. She was something much more sinister. 

Controlled ferocity and laser-like focus, intent on snapping any bone or splitting any flesh that stood in her way.

And on the occasion she was the one who ended up under Annie’s boot, gravel imprinting into her cheek as Annie pressed her weight, the look in her eyes was so starkly murderous that Annie’s veins iced with cold blood, bearing no doubt that Mikasa would pick her carcass clean if it came down to it.

Now she was standing in front of Annie, her heel grinding out the remnants of the flame from Annie’s last secret of the night. The patch of scorched earth started back up at them, a mark of death where no living thing could grow again.

“Why do you burn everything that you write?”

Mikasa’s eyes stay trained on the earth as she spoke to Annie, her words devoid of intonation.

Annie glanced up at her, lingering on a pink healing cut beneath her lip. It was a thin, flaking scab; a fading mark of a painful wound it had once been. Annie remembered the moment her elbow had hit that very spot, the hard jab of bone connecting with a blood-curdling crack as she felt Mikasa’s tooth give way behind the soft skin. 

She had regretted that...before Mikasa had spit said tooth and collected blood right back in Annie’s face, the metallic taste lingering on Annie’s tongue and burning into her skin.

Annie almost smiled at the memory.

Mikasa awaited her answer patiently, her eyes now surveying the night sky. Her arms were crossed as her gaze lingered on the pale moon, and Annie wondered what she might be looking for.

“Because they’re secrets.”

After taking in the answer for a brief moment, Mikasa curiously looked down and crouched lower to the ground, poking at the burnt parchment remnants with her finger, her actions so careful and measured that Annie thought she might be trying to draw out the words from them.

Mikasa’s next words were predictable.

“Will they hurt Eren?”

Annie watched the tips of Mikasa’s fingers dip into the small pile of sooty flakes, sifting and swirling with featherlight arcs. But the words were long gone, now part of the air that tasted sour on Annie’s tongue, that burned the lining of her lungs. Four simple words that, together, damned her and liberated her all in one fell swoop, a life sentence that she wouldn’t live to serve:

_ I’m the Female Titan. _

Mikasa’s eyes, made darker by the night sky so that her irises shone like the inky depths of a well, bore into Annie’s.

“Yes.”

An imperceptible nod, perhaps as acknowledgment of Annie’s honesty.

She stood up then, quietly, running her fingers along the back of her thigh, a dark smear against the white, thin fabric of her pants.

“Will they hurt you?”

Annie blinked, her lips parted slightly.

She had not expected Mikasa to ask about her. 

“Not if I burn them.”

Every scrawl of her pen was a purge, drawing out the secrets sunk deep within her pores, spilling them onto the page. 

Every light of a match was a promise, an oath to destroy the poisons that slowed her body and weighed heavy on her mind.

And if she burned them, for just one moment, they didn’t exist.

Mikasa stood with her arms hanging at her sides, looking peculiarly like the awkward teens who shuffled on the sidelines whenever the cadets had a weekend dance.

Annie supposed that’s what she was. That’s what they all were; awkward teenagers forced to grow up too fast. Take away the kills, the weapons, the calluses and the scars and Mikasa was just a sinewy, tall teenage girl with attachment issues, bad social skills and enviable hair.

A chill touched her bones and Annie shivered, pulling the collar of her hoodie up higher. She looked at Mikasa, taking in her tepid stare, wondering if she’d even blinked yet.

“Why do you watch me every night?”

Mikasa tilted her head, appraising Annie as if deciding if she was worth an answer. Annie felt herself swallow as she challenged her gaze, determined to win whatever staring match it seemed the other girl wanted to start. But the game ended before it had even begun, as Mikasa again turned her eyes up to the sky.

Softly, Annie let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“I don’t have a reason.”

Of course there was a reason; it was just one that Annie would never know.

She let herself study Mikasa’s profile, running down the delicate curve of her nose to her lips, pressed into a small, thin line. Annie wondered if her lips remembered what the shape of a smile was, if the expression was as foreign to her as it was to Annie. Smiles were vicious...bared teeth, curled lips and turned corners of the mouth. The gleam of predatory teeth, of dark eyes that twisted an otherwise innocent gesture. Smiles were lies, ones that Annie learned not to believe a long time ago. 

She wondered how none of their fellow cadets saw through it. The secrecy, the chilly air of indifference, the emotionless mask that everyone else took as a careful calm; serious Mikasa, aloof Annie. 

But the way she was, the way Mikasa was...none of it was a personality trait. Every averted gaze, cold shoulder and distant stare was a reflex borne from such desolate and defining heart-break and tragedy that it could never be shared with anyone else, worn like a second skin that could never be shed.

When she looked at Mikasa she saw herself in her eyes; saw herself in the center where no light was aloud, where the endless black swallowed her and sucked up anything good she’d ever been and spit out a weak, scared little girl.

So when they fought, it was a battle against herself. Every breath she kicked out of Mikasa’s lungs was ripped from her own chest; every drop of blood drawn was spilled from under her own skin. Every move she made was countered, the shadow of Mikasa’s taller form always looming and anticipating, beating Annie back down each time she tried to get up.

It made sense, in a way. She never could win against her demons.

Mikasa was looking at her now, and Annie wondered how long it’d been, but she didn’t look away, instead watching Mikasa’s chest rise and fall, wandering up the pointed line of her chin and around the soft curve of her cheek.

She almost felt like she didn’t deserve to see her like this, to look at her as a human being and not some monster, some shell of a person, some mirror of herself that deserved to get buried into the ground because it was where she belonged.

No, on a night like this, where the sky was colored as if they were draped in thick, royal velvet reserved for queens, stars studding the surface like jewels on crown, Annie could only see beauty. Softly furrowed brows, thick lines of lashes above eyes the color of the still, grey sea. Silken strands of hair that framed her face, bangs that fell with a ticklish tease over the bridge of her nose; a gentle curtain just a shade off from the midnight horizon. 

Annie thought that a lot of girls were pretty, but not beautiful. Only Mikasa could take that title, glowing beneath the moonlight like she was made of stars.

Annie fumbled in the pocket of her jacket for her pencil, the small piece of graphite and wood that was worn down to the size of her pinky finger, and felt for the soft, worn parchment she knew was there after she’d washed the jacket a few times.

Using her left hand as a shield from Mikasa’s watchful eyes, Annie cradled the paper in her palm as she wrote with her right; small, cramped letters that held all the sincerity Annie had left in her heart:

_Mikasa, you are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. _

Mikasa focused on Annie’s fist tightening around the scrap, crumpling under the pressure. 

“You’re not going to burn it?”

Annie shook her head slowly, inhaling cautiously through her nose. She waited for the inevitable singe, the afterburn that followed a breath after she’d let out her poisons, their effects residual and lingering long after the ashes had blown away. But her lungs were filled only with clean air, a pureness that invigorated her and calmed her and made her feel as peaceful as the crickets that lazily chirped throughout the silent night. 

This secret was different from the bad ones. It didn’t need to be destroyed.

And yet, it was something she couldn’t hold onto. A plain statement, an awe-struck observation that had probably been said to Mikasa a million times over.

But Annie had only said it once, so it meant something. 

Meaningfulness was dangerous in her world. Finding purpose in things other than what she was there to do ran risks, exposed her to false notions of hope and lifted the cloak of her villainy so that light could pour in, illuminating things that couldn’t be seen behind the thick wool of staunch obedience and pervasive fear.

She thought Mikasa was beautiful, so very beautiful but she couldn’t acknowledge the distinct human-ness that thought betrayed, so she had to let it go. Simply because it meant something.

“Turn around.”

Though Annie spoke with purpose, Mikasa did not yield so easily. Her posture stiffened as if Annie had told her to brace for an attack. A few moments of contemplation displayed as evenly as ever across her features; a still mask that did not divulge the questions that were surely running through her mind. The words “why” must have weighed heavily on her lips, but they never left her mouth. Instead, carefully, slowly, she began to face away, her eyes locked with Annie’s in a cautionary gaze that was as much a warning as if Mikasa was holding a blade to her throat.

When Mikasa’s back was fully turned, a rigid statue unmoving save for the ends of her hair that wafted with the gentle wind, Annie walked a few paces opposite from her and kneeled, feeling moisture from the soil seep into her knees. She took out her knife, the carbon steel gleaming against the soft earth she sunk it into, carving a deep, tiny trench; a grave for words that could only ever be buried deep. She dropped the scrap, wrinkled and damp from her palm, into the darkness, the shadows shrouding its forbidden contents. Her fingers curled around the mounds of dirt she’d unearthed, raking it over the hollow, snuffing out the faded yellow paper that peeked out from beneath a smattering of soil. 

When it was sealed, she stood up to press her boot over the surface, flattening it out so that it blended with the rest of the barren earth, swallowed up and blotted out, safe behind a wall of weathering rock and rotted matter. 

It was done.

  
Mikasa heard Annie’s measured footsteps approach, turning to face her as her eyes immediately flitted to her empty palms. “Where is it?”

Annie glanced over her shoulder, surveying the cracked earth, undecorated save for the few tufts of yellowed weeds and dead flowers that sprouted in dry crevices. She tried to focus in, her eyes scanning the never-ending plains in vain, trying to remember where’d she’d buried it. The earth began to blur and blend with the grassy hilltop further out, with the shadows that filled all the impressions and empty spaces. What had she even buried? Had she written something? 

Annie brought a finger to her temple, trying to prod her mind to work with her. But she was left betrayed; she couldn’t remember. 

Whatever it was, she couldn’t see it anymore. It must have not mattered.

Turning back to Mikasa, she lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. 

“Gone.”


	3. Chapter 3

Mikasa had a secret of her own, a secret she’d been holding longer than anyone knew. A secret that was a terrible thing to keep, one that made her a traitor to humanity as much as the person the secret was about.

She knew.

She knew Annie was the Female Titan, long before Armin had figured it out. 

Her duality had always been apparent to her; the way Annie had the presence of a powerful being in the sparring ring in defiance of her small stature; her apathetic words betrayed by the vulnerability in her eyes, a selfish desire to connect with the people she tried so hard to hate. 

When Mikasa first saw the Female Titan she knew it was Annie because despite the rampage, the murder and the ferocity coursing through her veins, it still felt cold. And most of all, she still had those unmistakable sad eyes.

Eyes that Mikasa had seen when she had Annie pinned to the ground, looking away when she saw herself in irises the color of the sky.

Eyes that met briefly in the night, locking just long enough for Mikasa to see the loneliness she felt echoing back at her, a silent plea that no one ever listened to, simply because they couldn’t see. Because they didn’t know what to look for.

But Mikasa had always seen Annie for who she was.

It should have been more troubling, knowing about Annie but having no desire to tell anyone. Even after she’d murdered her superiors and tried to kidnap Eren, the burning hatred that should have been in Mikasa’s heart for her was strangely void. 

What good would it do to break someone that was already in pieces?

Even so, she knew she couldn’t help Annie.

She’d wanted to try, many times. But the words never came to her, and the inexplicable feelings she had for her never quite surfaced, never had the chance to fully mature enough for Mikasa to realize what they meant, or how to act on them.

So she never said anything, instead just lingering, observing, unable to offer anything but her presence.

Naively, she thought if neither of them told, it would never get out. That maybe, if she didn’t say it aloud, time would pass and they’d both forget, and the secret would just disappear. Along with the words, Annie’s binds would dissipate things could be different.

When she looked back on that time, before the point of no return, Mikasa wished she’d been able to unearth the words that had always been deep within her, words that might have changed everything.

If she had just told Annie that it was okay, that she knew and that it was really  _ okay _ (even if she didn’t quite believe it herself), maybe it would have been enough to prevent the destruction and pain that soon followed.

But Annie’s secret was bigger than both of them, and when she’d finally revealed it, Mikasa let a mask harden over her features as she prepared to play the part of the betrayed comrade, eager for vengeance, a role that she had no choice but to play or risk exposing her own complicitness in the ultimate lie.

She channeled all her rage and frustration into every cut she made into Annie, angry lashes that tore into her own heart because Annie’s burden was hers too. She deserved all the hate and pain as much as Annie did, but Annie was the only one bearing it all for the world to see.

She was the villain, even though she was no different than everyone else.

Mikasa was thankful that her tears went unseen as she flew through the air.

When she looked into Annie’s eyes for the last time, she did not tell her that it was okay.

Instead, she told her to fall.

* * *

When she’d take the steps down to the dark basement, the staircase narrow and winding, she’d kneel in front of Annie and watch her, as she always did.

In a way, it wasn’t so different than when Annie was sentient; a thick wall of ice, expressionless, silent. It did not feel all that different.

What made her heart ache was her closed eyes, because eyes were meant to open and Annie’s hadn’t opened. Not in a long time.

But despite the whispers that she’d be forever comatose, Mikasa held onto something she thought she didn’t have any more: hope.

She hoped Annie was somewhere else, dreaming of a world where strong arms could be traded for the walls of cold crystal, holding her close. A world where secrets could be shared over breathless chatter and giggles in the corridors of a busy school, not burned into ash and buried into the ground. A world were red wasn’t the color of blood that was endlessly spilled but a warm scarf, wrapped around her by someone that wanted to protect her. 

Mikasa would put her hand on the crystal, wishing that the warmth from her palm would spread throughout and reach the girl inside.

But she knew better.

In the end, she’d walk away, leaving Annie behind because that’s all she could ever do.

She decided, on one of those many nights, that she hated secrets.

If only Annie hadn’t been so good at keeping them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmm not really how i wanted to wrap this up but I waited too long to write this last part. I think that this maybe should have stayed in the drafts as an exercise...I think there are some interesting things to take from it that I could have developed more, but I lost the inspiration. 
> 
> Hope some parts are at least enjoyable to some! :)


End file.
